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Herbalist Sam Coffman shares how herbs can be used for effective acute health care.

Sam Coffman is a former Special Forces Green Beret, herbalist, and author whose mission is to spread knowledge and empowerment of sustainable living and health, both through his school and his self-founded free herbal clinic, The Herbal Medics, for the underserved. After thousands of clinical hours as both a medic on teams and in military emergency rooms, as well as working with herbs, Sam’s primary goal has become the creation of an integrative medical model that embraces both vitalistic and mechanistic aspects of herbalism into a collaboration with orthodox models of diagnosis and treatment. Sam’s passion lies with addressing emergency, acute, and post-disaster illness, wounds, and trauma with herbal and first aid care, and his school, the Human Path, offers myriad courses in sustainable living, post-disaster care, herbal wilderness first aid, and clinical herbalism.

Listen to the podcast to hear about how to address acute health conditions and…

How thinking about herbalism is different than thinking about conventional pharmaceutical health care, and a mental paradigm shift is required in order to use herbs most effectively.

How the philosophy and actions behind an herbal protocol differs from the philosophy and actions behind a conventional pharmaceutical protocol.

The history of medical education in America, and how that changed who had the luxury of

learning licensed medical education as well as the protocols of medical treatment.

About Sam

Sam Coffman began his medical education in the military as a U.S. Special Forces Medic (aka Green Beret medic) in 1989. At that same time, he became highly interested in herbalism as a way to provide health care in remote regions with a minimum of medical supplies, both for acute care and trauma as well as for chronic conditions. This was the start of a long journey into the world of plant medicine for Sam. He is a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild. He has taught herbalism subjects for over 25 years and has worked as a clinical herbalist for over 15 years. Sam founded and runs a survival and herbalism school (The Human Path & Herbal Medics University) offering classes throughout central Texas and around the USA. He also co-founded the organization Herbal Medics. This organization applies holistic health concepts in order to help medically underserved communities in the USA and abroad. Herbal Medics sends volunteers and students to underserved locations to provide Herbal clinics, off-grid water purification methods and sustainable agriculture planning and education. The curriculum at Sam’s school (The Human Path, http://thehumanpath.com) spans a range of subjects that are all applicable to sustainable living and sustainable health. From off-grid power, water filtration, permaculture, blacksmithing, and metalworking, to self-defense, tactics, primitive skills, and over 1800 hours of clinical and practical herbal medicine curriculum (online and on-campus), The Human Path is first and foremost an herbalism school. However, all other skills taught at The Human Path support the mission of creating herbal clinics in underserved, remote, and even post-disaster environments. Herbalism courses range from clinical herbalism to advanced medicine making, doula, emergency birth and family herbalism, emergent response herbalism, and more. All subjects are part of the fundamental team and community skills necessary to create and maintain successful and sustainable health care solutions. Sam integrates his training and experiences as a U.S. Special Forces medic with his schools and projects in order to create fully experiential learning environments for his students while providing assistance to communities in need.